Forbidden Relationships...aka Love Wins!

Approaching God as a Nation, as Families, and as Individuals

Acharei Mot and Kedoshim (Leviticus 16-20) are about how we are and are not to relate to God. Since marriage is an image of our relationship to God, they contain many examples of forbidden human relationships.
  • Leviticus 16 – Approaching God as a nation.
  • Leviticus 17 – Approaching God as individuals. Things that will prevent closeness.
  • Leviticus 18 – Mistakes other peoples made in their relationships. Judgment as a nation and as individuals.
  • Men with women
  • The offspring of relationships between men and women
  • Men with men
  • Men and women with animals
  • Leviticus 19 – Being set apart from other nations by a healthy relationship with God and each other.
  • Leviticus 20 – Refusing to be different creates unhealthy relationships with God and each other. Don’t blow it.

The Only Love that Matters

In Leviticus 19, God said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In Leviticus 20, He said "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death."

There is no contradiction. Love means doing what's best for people. It means refusing to tolerate behaviors that destroy the community & its relationship with God.

Celebrating spiritual disease is cowardly. It's an excuse to avoid speaking the hard truth that homosexuality is perverse rot. It's death. Love doesn't see a person committing suicide and say, "Oh, how sweet! Love wins." What vile filth has infected people's souls that they could possibly entertain such things?

No, love says to the man drinking poison, "Stop! No more!"

This is love by God's standard, the only standard that matters: "You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them." (Lev 20:22a)


Open sexual perversion defiles the entire nation, not just those who practice it. The closer a nation is to God, the quicker and more severe is the ruin brought on by their wickedness. Things that will bring a nation to ruin: perversion, blood-guilt, idolatry.

Do you want to save America? Then don't tolerate open perversion. End abortion. God won't wait forever.

Fortunately, forgiveness awaits the penitent. "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked."

Prohibited Degrees of Kinship

There are numerous methods of charting degrees of consanguinity floating around out there, so I thought I should post something about my own. Especially since I have mentioned elsewhere that God prohibits marriage to anyone closer than the fourth degree. 

Ancestors and descendants, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and siblings are all out of bounds. First cousins are acceptable. At least to God. You might feel differently. 

Don't use this chart for legal purposes, of course. Many jurisdictions define the degrees differently.

God's Law prohibits marriage with 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree relations. There are rare, marginal cases that are not addressed or that don't fit neatly into this hierarchy, but that's why God gave us minds and spirits.


Two Sons, Two Kingdoms

Genesis 44:27-29 And your servant my father said to us, You know that my wife bore me two sons. (28) And the one went out from me, and I said, Surely he is torn in pieces. And I never saw him since. (29) And if you take this one also from me, and mischief befall him, you shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

I frequently wonder if Jacob knew the details of the future history of his sons. Although he certainly only meant Joseph and Benjamin here, his words and the story that followed prophesied of events centuries away.

In the 8th century BC, the Assyrian armies captured the northern kingdom of Israel and scattered her inhabitants across the Ancient Near East. Many of the old prophets referred to the northern kingdom as Ephraim, the son of Joseph. Ephraim didn't stop in Persia but continued across the whole globe. In their long diaspora they have forgotten their identity and have become lo ami ("not a people").

Three hundred years later, Judah was invaded and scattered by Babylon. When the two kingdoms split during the reign of Rehoboam, Benjamin became part of the southern kingdom known as Judah. Remember that Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin. Unlike Ephraim, Judah never forgot their identity. They have remained a relatively distinct people to this day.

This is a possible prophetic meaning of Jacob's statement:

Joseph, by way of Ephraim, the northern kingdom of Israel, is the first son. He was taken away, and, to all appearances was destroyed forever. Benjamin is the second son. He was taken away with Judah, the southern Kingdom, but was never in any real danger of being annihilated. Both of Jacob's sons were restored to him, and both of the houses of Israel will also be restored to their Heavenly Father. The house of Judah is returning to the Land en masse, bringing Benjamin with them, while the house of Israel is awakening to their identity and bringing much of the rest of the world with them. The first stage of Hosea's words concerning Israel was fulfilled millennia ago (Hosea 1:9). The second stage is coming to pass right now (Hosea 1:10), and the third stage, the reunification of the entire nation under the singular banner of the Messiah (Hosea 1:11), cannot be far behind!

(Please don't assume I am applying the term "Ephraim" to anyone but the physical descendants of Ephraim. I'll leave the precise tribal affiliations of the mixed multitude up to Yeshua when He returns.)


Love is the Law


  • If you love God, you will obey his commands.
  • If you are not obeying God's commands, you do not love God.
  • If you love God, you will love your neighbor.
  • If you do not love your neighbor, you are not obeying God's commands.
  • If you do not love your neighbor, you do not love God.

What, then, does it mean to love your neighbor?

Funny you should ask. God gave us a book all about it.

Update: After I wrote this, I listened to another sermon from Jim Staley called "Love vs. Law." It's good, but quite long.

Questions and Answers on Christmas


It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Should it? I've read several discussions of the topic over the last week or so, and thought I'd throw my thoughts out there too. Specifically I want to answer three questions.

1. Should Yeshua's birth be celebrated?

I can't think of any reason why not. It was one of the greatest events in history, and God has a history of wanting people to celebrate great events. As long as it doesn't violate any of God's other commands, why not? Celebrate your own birth and those of your family and friends while you're at it.

2. Should Yeshua's birth be celebrated on December 25th?

This is, perhaps, a thornier question. I don't think many people seriously believe Yeshua was born on that date, but is that a problem? We should celebrate his birth in some fashion every single day! Since nobody can be absolutely sure on which day he was born, why shouldn't we just pick this one?

There is nothing inherently evil about any particular day on the calendar. October 31st is a day that God made just like December 25th, July 4th, and April 12th. There is nothing wrong with having a party, inviting friends and family to your house for a feast, or even exchanging gifts on those days. However, there may still be a problem!

God told Israel (with whom we have been joined) to "learn not the way of the heathen,"1 and to "learn not to do after the abominations of those nations."2 Of course, he did not mean "Don't do anything that pagans do." That would be absurd. Pagans sing, dance, and eat cookies, and there is nothing at all wrong with those things. God's intent seems to have been to say, "Don't adopt religious practices in order to emulate pagans or that are specifically pagan in nature." Does a peculiar celebration of Yeshua's birth held on December 25th pass or fail this test? Here are the apparent facts:

a) Yeshua was almost certainly not born on December 25th.
b) The date appears to have been chosen after the 1st century by gentile church leaders with little to no understanding of Torah and Jewish customs, and a strong desire to distance themselves from anything "Jewish".
c) A few church leaders of the day believed Yeshua had been born in December, but most seem to have settled on that day specifically because it was the Winter Solstice, an already a well-established holiday in most pagan religions, but notably absent from any of the Biblical holy days. The Roman church, especially, has a very long history of adopting pagan traditions and redressing them in quasi-biblical trappings.

God seems to have a habit of grouping significant events around particular days. Some of those days correspond to the Biblical Feasts, some of them don't. Since Yeshua is the focus of the Law, I'm willing to bet that all of the major events of Yeshua's life took place on or around one of the seven feast days. Here are a few examples:

a) Passover/Unleavened Bread/Firstfruits: Death and resurrection
b) Shavuot: Teaching in the temple as a child (and the giving of the Holy Spirit, aka Pentecost)
c) Rosh Hoshana: Second coming?
d) Yom Kippur: Day of judgment
e) Sukkot: Arrival in the Promised Land. Both times.

There are some very good reasons for supposing that Yeshua was actually born during Sukkot. While I haven't done the math myself (other trustworthy individuals have and you are welcome to check their work), it appears that John the Baptist was born around Passover. Yeshua would have been born six months later, which is about the time of Sukkot. Also, Old Testament prophecies (and John in the New Testament) talk of God tabernacling among his people, and tabernacling is what Sukkot is all about.3

I am not saying that everyone must celebrate Yeshua's birth during Sukkot or that anyone must celebrate his birth at all. I'm not even saying that it is wrong to celebrate his birth on December 25th. I am saying that the choice of that date seems to have been inspired by a desire to emulate a pagan religious practice.

Which brings me to Christmas trees.

3) Should believers have Christmas trees?

The origins of the Christmas tree are shrouded in even more mystery than the origins of December 25th as Christmas. There are a lot of theories with very little historical documentation. Here are some better attested facts:

a) Evergreen branches and lights were used as decorations by the Romans to celebrate Saturnalia. Some Christians retained this practice and might have incorporated it into their Christmas celebrations.
b) Many ancient peoples used evergreen branches as winter decorations to symbolize life against the cold of the season.
c) Some ancient peoples used evergreens to ward against evil spirits.
d) The first Christmas trees, as such, appear to have originated in Germany in the late Middle Ages. Nobody seems to know who started the custom or why.

There is nothing inherently wrong with decorating your house with evergreens. However, the date of Christmas was specifically chosen to correspond with the Winter Solstice, and evergreen branches and wreaths were used as decorations for Saturnalia, the Roman pre-Solstice holiday period, which corresponds to the Germanic Yule Tide, from which we get...Yule Tide and probably Advent. It seems to me that decorating with those objects as part of a Christmas celebration is dangerously close to emulating pagan religious practices while saying you are doing it for God. Maybe early Christians copied Saturnalia customs and maybe they didn't, but Paul said to avoid the appearance of evil. If you have evergreen decorations in your house normally, I don't see any reason to take them down, but I wouldn't put them up just for Christmas.

Christmas trees are almost certainly related to the many customs of decorating homes with evergreen branches during the winter. That, in itself, poses no problem, and the pagan roots of putting decorated trees indoors seem dubious. However, consider these words of God given through Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 10:2-4 Thus says the LORD: "Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, (3) for the customs of the peoples are vanity. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. (4) They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

Clearly, God did not intend Jeremiah's audience to interpret this as referring to Christmas trees or even their analog in that day. The very next verse explains that he was talking about idols, carved figures used in the veneration of deities, but God's perspective is not limited to what's happening today. He knew 2500 years ago that we would be cutting trees down, prominently displaying them in our homes and buildings, decorating them with silver and gold, and bowing down before them to receive their gifts. And he knew that we would be reading Jeremiah's book. I don't believe in coincidences, so I'm going to play it safe and not put a Christmas tree up in my home.


1 Jeremiah 10:2
2 Deuteronomy 18:9
3 I don't buy the argument about sheep not being in the fields during December. They didn't have huge barns in which to shelter their sheep. They kept them in the fields year round. According to the US Department of Agriculture, shepherds in Montana around the beginning of the 20th century kept their sheep on the open plains through much harsher winters than Israel has ever experienced. Why shouldn't Jewish shepherds in the 1st century BC?

[Updated December 1, 2020.]



Does God Ever Give Permission to Sin?

I frequently hear people say that God allowed this or that sinful behavior because people are weak.

Buzzzz. Try again.

God does not allow sin. He never says, "Don't ever do this, but if you do, here's how I want you to go about it..." He just says, "Don't do that."

So, if, in the course of your Bible reading, you see that God said, "If you are going to [insert activity here], then do it like this," you can safely conclude that the given activity is not sinful. It might not be the best thing for you, but it's not a sin to make choices where God has given you liberty.

Mark McLellan on the Roles of Men and Women

Pastor Mark has another great podcast, this one on the respective roles and responsibilities of men and women in marriage. Listen to his last sermon at http://graftedin.com. Seriously. Listen.

Marriage in the Bible

Jacob, Rachel, & Leah: Whose Eyes Were Veiled?

Genesis 29:23 …he took Leah his daughter…

It appears that this maneuver was Laban’s idea, but Jewish tradition says that Rachel and Leah willingly cooperated. Jacob and Rachel had devised a secret sign for just this situation, so that Jacob would not be fooled. Rachel, knowing that Leah might never be able to marry and have a family, had compassion on her and revealed the secret sign to her. Even so, it seems difficult to believe that Jacob could make such a mistake, especially after having lived with both of these women for seven years. But there are several other factors to consider:
  1. There was almost certainly a substantial amount of alcohol consumed during the celebrations.
  2. Rachel and Leah probably both wore veils, even in public, and which they might not have removed even on their wedding night until after the last lamp had been put out.
  3. The interior of an animal skin tent at night can be exceptionally dark.
  4. Jewish tradition says that Rachel and Leah were twins and so could have been very similar in height, weight, and build.
  5. God had promised to look after Jacob until he returned to Canaan, and Jacob’s blindness could have been induced by God to ensure the execution of a divine plan.

In support of the fourth and fifth items above, there is another tradition that says Esau should have married Leah while Jacob should have married Rachel. Since Jacob received Esau’s blessing from Isaac, he also had to be the father of all twelve of the tribes of Israel. Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah had been marked as the mothers of the nation of Israel, and no other woman would do. Therefore Jacob had to marry all four of them, and God made sure that it happened. But why did Rachel and Leah go along with this idea? I have heard some women say that they would rather be the third or fourth wife of King David than the first wife of Nabal.

The rabbis say that Jacob married so late in life because he had been studying under Shem, the son of Noah. I do not know if that is true, but it would certainly make Jacob a more attractive prospect than most other men. Having spent the last seven years in such close proximity to Jacob, Leah might have already harbored a strong attraction to him. She was also a godly woman and probably very respectful of her father’s wishes, however conniving he might be.

Rachel was more likely than Leah to find another husband if Jacob rejected her and could have felt some compassion toward her sister in her unfortunate situation. She was also a godly woman and probably experienced a great deal of conflict in her loyalties, as she was not yet fully married to Jacob.

George Google Orwell and the Internet Borg

  • What if your free email provider indexed every email you sent or received for keywords?
  • What if they provided a free search engine that remembered every search forever?
  • What if they also owned a great video sharing site and remembered every video you watched?
  • What if they offered free blogging sites, remembered every visit, and indexed every post and comment?
  • What if they offered a free website analytics tool that anyone could use to keep track of every site visitor?
  • What if they had an ad agency that tracked every visitor of every website wherever they went so they could deliver more targeted advertising?
  • What if the same company offered free maps and directions with satellite or even street-level views and remembered every location you viewed?
  • What if they made the maps really easy by linking them to the GPS device in your phone so you can never get lost?
  • What if you could use their on-line productivity software to create all your documents and financial records and share them with anyone.
  • What if they let you store backup copies of all your computer files on their servers for safe keeping and kept a copy of your encryption key?
  • What if they cross-referenced all these different data points and shared them with others?

George Orwell? 1984? The real thing could be so much worse than old George ever dreamed.

Thank You, Veterans

To those of you who have been willing to put yourselves in mortal danger for the rest of us, Thank You!

To everyone else: Tomorrow is not the day for patriotic disclaimers. Don't say, "Thank you, but..." Don't say, "Serving in the military would be ok if only..." Just say thank you. Show sincere appreciation, and leave it at that. Resume your political commentary on Thursday.

Reality Check: Another Study to Confirm the Obvious

The University of Montreal tells us that women are better at identifying emotional responses than men. My first reaction was, "And someone thought we needed a study to figure that out?" But then I remembered that this is a university. Yes, they needed a study to remind them girls and boys really are different even on the inside.

Side note: Evolutionary psychology is almost as big a waste of time and money as xenobiology. Almost.

Parents Know

They might get some of the details wrong, but when it comes to your essential character, your parents will always know you better than you will ever know yourself.

Now I Understand

Tents, food, drink, singing, dancing...what's not to love? Poverty, homelessness, fire ants, mosquitoes, damp, humidity, and the potential for scorpions and poisonous snakes. If one week is this much fun, I can only imagine forty years, and I don't even have to deal with a latrine! I completely understand the Israelites' grumpiness in the wilderness.

Yom Kippur 5770

May your eyes be opened and your heart softened.
May your prayers be heard and your sins forgiven.
May your days be blessed and your name written in the Book of Life.

Nature and Nature's God

Humans Are an Essential Part of the Ecosystem

Researchers are just figuring out what has been obvious to everyone who takes the Biblical account of creation seriously, whether literally or metaphorically: humans are an essential part of the global ecosystem.
Transhumance Helps Vulture Conservation
ScienceDaily (2009-09-23) -- Researchers in Spain have shown for the first time the close space-time relationship between the presence of the griffon vulture and transhumant sheep farming in mountain passes. Transhumance -- the seasonal movement of people with their livestock -- has fallen in some parts of Spain by up to 80 percent over the past four years. The scientists say that traditional livestock farming practices are crucial for the preservation of mountain ecosystems.

Gods of Nature

Large geological structures have a way of profoundly inculcating themselves into one's imagination. Mighty rivers, high mountains, harsh deserts, wide seas. They become the dominant reference point for navigation, rivalry, and recreation. If you have lived near such a creature for an extended period, you probably know just what I mean. I grew up within a few miles of the Mississippi River, and although I moved away twenty years ago, it's still there in the back of my mind. It influences the analogies I employ, the color scheme I chose for my house, and even my dreams. I have lived at the foot of the Rocky Mountains for almost twelve years now, and I always know which way is west. If I can see the mountains, then I can find my way. They have a mystical kind of presence. It's easy to see how people come to ascribe divine attributes to such things.

The Death & Resurrection of All Mankind

God said Adam would die "in the day" that he ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but we know that he actually lived more than 900 years longer. Did God lie to him?

When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, he came under the Law's power to condemn. He sentenced himself, and all mankind, to death in that moment. By one man's sin, we are condemned. Fortunately, by another Man's righteousness, we are absolved. "Go," therefore, "and sin no more."

See also: "One Day Is As a Thousand Years"

Life Doesn't Get Easier

Why doesn't life get easier with practice?

Because life is not lived for its own sake. It is preparation for something greater. When a man trains his body, he does not do so only to make his training easier. He trains in preparation for some contest. When a bodybuilding contestant can easily lift 100 lbs, it would do him little good to continue with the same exercise, weight, and repetitions. If he is to improve his strength, he increases the weight or the reps or both. He works another muscle group. When life gets harder every year, don't despair. Instead, bear up and realize that the harder you train now, the greater the contest and the prize that God has in store for you later.

Love Her or Leave Her Alone: Captive War Brides in Torah

When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her. 
Deuteronomy 21:10-14

The practice of taking captive women as concubines has long been frowned upon in western cultures, and for good reason. As with marrying more than one woman, marrying a prisoner of war is a complicated and difficult proposition. A man of weak character can't pull it off, and a man of poor character can't do it well. On the other hand, difficult doesn't mean sinful or impossible. In fact, in the context of the ancient near east--probably in other contexts as well--marriage was one of the best options available. It is better than killing her with the rest of her people or leaving her to be abused or enslaved by some other nation. At least as a concubine to an Israelite, she would be brought into the religion of Yahweh and enjoy the rights accorded to all wives by Torah.

Allowing a man to take such a woman back to his home also recognizes and helps to stem the harsh reality of rape in war. This law says that a man is not allowed to simply take whatever woman he wants, but knowing that he can still have her after following the proper procedure (and being reminded of that fact every year when reading Ki Tetzei, Deuteronomy 21:19-25:19, in the congregation) can serve to temper his immediate lusts. Chances are very good that after the thirty days of mourning have passed, he will have realized what a crazy idea it is to bring a pagan woman into his house, and he will allow her to leave. If not, then he would be required to begin her education in Torah and her conversion to belief in the True God before he could consummate the marriage. (See Leviticus 19:19, Deuteronomy 7:3, and Deuteronomy 22:9-11.)

If he changes his mind and allows her to leave, she will no longer be a prisoner of war but a free woman with all the rights of a stranger in Israel. Those rights were considerable indeed, especially in light of what she might face in some other land.

Thou Shalt Not Rationalize Your Paganism

Deuteronomy 12:4 You shall not do so to YHWH your God.
God told Israel to completely destroy the Canaanites’ places and articles of worship, then He told them not to incorporate pagan elements into His religion.

For most of the last two thousand years, the Roman Catholic Church has made such assimilation an integral part of their evangelism, while most of the rest of the Church played along. We justify our disobedience to God by pointing to the numbers of people professing faith or being baptized.

Today, Christianity is so thoroughly infected with pagan imagery and practice that, like fish who can't see the water, we rarely even know it.

God understands how adaptability can be used to make the Church more seeker-friendly, yet He still commanded us not to compromise in this way. Easter eggs, jack-o-lanterns, Christmas trees, etc. All of those things were adopted from pagan religions, yet we keep doing them, thinking that we are pleasing God. “He knows my heart.”

Except that God specifically said, “Don’t do those things and say you are doing them for me.

The Myth of Domestic Violence

According to a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau (That mouthful sounds like a bureaucratic dream!), the leading cause of physical injury to women 18 and over is accidentally falling, not domestic violence or any other kind of violence against women. Not only is domestic violence not a leading cause of injury to women, all deliberate acts of violence account for only 1.4% of injuries suffered and reported by women.

Potential problems with the report:
  1. It was made by government.
  2. It was made by people.
  3. It depends on accurate reporting in emergency rooms.
  4. It depends on emergency room visits.
  5. It depends on accurate compilation, analysis, etc. I.e. it was made by people.

I'm not saying domestic violence doesn't exist or isn't a problem. It's just not the rampant problem feminists and their allies would have you believe. They are either delusional or they are liars. Take your pick.

The Hawthorn Grows



A hawthorn grows on a windswept hill. Its bark is scarred from a tether long cut, and a groove semicircular where the wire once looped round. The tree flesh folded over the constriction as it grew, inevitable expansion strangling itself until the moisture, cold rain, snow, and fog and the changing temperatures finally oxidized the formerly galvanized steel. Flecks yet remain in the woody skin of the tree, a blackened dimple in place of a long, dead tie. Fragments of orange, gray, and black lie in the grass like the corpse of a whip snake long dessicated and dissolved, the tree set free at last, forever scarred.

A foot or so below on the wood lies another scar more brutal, more damaging. No tree could survive such a wound, a decapitation, and one tree did not as this hawthorn lives on through the roots of another, its own native roots torn and scattered by wind and forgotten. A gnarled, crooked tree died so that this thorn tree could live through the work of grafting, of having been uprooted, dismembered, resurrected by careful, calloused hands. The scar a reminder not of pain but of life and of qualities valued in old, gray eyes. The roots creased the ground, stony and drab, like strong fingers breaking gravel into fine soil, drawing life and nourishment from…from nothing.

These stones never lived before, their granite surfaces marked by deep-fired crystals, but not a fossil can be found in even one pebble. No limestone here, no caliche or sandstone. Only lifeless, sterile, metamorphic children of a former monument, a mountain peak, worn and etched, crumbled by time and stirred by wind, bird, rodent, and invertebrates uncountable and the dusted remains of a thousand generations of things that never lived here, could never live in this cold, barren expose, until a single seed set by a startled, lost bird in a narrow, shallow cleft sprouted by freezing ice melt from a glacier with nowhere to hide from the sun so close in the thin, thin air. The tree grew gnarled, never blossomed. No flowers to see nor bees to hear.

So came the planter and cut the tree down to save his prize, save it for a lonely hidden life too far to be seen, too high to know warmth. Now blossoms the hawthorn up the hill from an imported hive. Now admires the planter its thorns and frost-bitten branches, lonely and scarred still growing in rocks.

The Mishkan, Marriage, and the UFC

Exodus 35:1
And Moses gathered all the congregation...
 Moses gathered men, women, and children together to hear the Torah. We all suffer as a result of each other's wickedness, but every individual is responsible for his own obedience to God. A man cannot be held responsible for his wife's sins, nor can a woman be held responsible for her husband's. He is responsible for how he loves and leads his wife, and she is responsible for how she respects and obeys her husband.

Exodus 35:5
...whosoever is of a willing heart... God invited every individual man, woman, and child to donate the materials of the Tabernacle: the metals, fabrics, oil, spices, and gems, all of the things that, together, symbolize a complete and balanced child of God. They also symbolize the roles of husband, wife, and children in a family. God wanted free-will offerings, because he does not force us to become the people he wants us to be.

A man cannot be forced to love his wife; he must choose to love her. She can manipulate him and cajole him, but the result is not real love. It is form without substance. Likewise, a woman cannot be forced to submit to her husband's rule. A man can certainly try to force his wife to submit, but he will fail. He can beat her, threaten her, or manipulate her, but he will never have true submission from the heart. Either she will resist to the point at which he is no longer willing to keep her as his wife or else she will become someone else, someone much less than the woman he married.

The Price of Patriotism and Leadership

Exodus 30:12
…every man a ransom for his soul… Although the King James translators chose to put “children” here instead of “sons,” the remainder of the text is clear that males are intended. This tax was only levied against men who were able to fight. No women or children were included. The resulting count of half-shekels was no doubt used to assign the leaders of tens, hundreds, and so forth, as well as to estimate the nation’s fighting strength. Women and children were not counted, because they did not participate in combat except in the most extreme circumstances. The half-shekel was silver, representing the blood of the donor. It was a statement of patriotism, of willingness to defend Israel to the death if required.

Exodus 30:20
When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation... Bronze represents judgment, and the priests were to wash in the bronze basin before ministering before God on behalf of the people. This is the same principle in effect when Peter wrote that "judgment must begin at the house of God." The more authority one has, the more responsibility and accountability. A husband and father must undergo judgment and purification before he is fully competent to judge and purify his family. A leader must be judged and found competent before he is placed in charge of a congregation.

Defending the Patriarchy

Exodus 27:21
Aaron and his sons shall order it...
Not Aaron and his daughters, but Aaron and his sons. There are certainly times when righteous women can and should be in positions of authority, but the example repeatedly given by God is that, under all normal circumstances, men are to order the government, the congregation, and their families.

The Firstborn of Egypt and Israel

Exodus 11:5
And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die… 

Although the Torah is explicit that the firstborn males of God's people belong to him, it is implicit that the firstborn males of all other nations also belong to him. No matter one’s cultural inheritance, God’s intent for the firstborn is to act as his family's kinsman redeemer. In taking the firstborn, as opposed to the youngest or the strongest, God denied the Egyptians their kinsmen redeemers. In effect, he told the Egyptians that there was no recourse other than repentance and accepting him as their ultimate redeemer.

Exodus 13:15
...all that openeth the matrix...
There appear to be two ways to interpret this phrase. I do not know which is correct, but I suspect the first:
  1. "Firstborn" refers to the firstborn child of his father. "Openeth the matrix" is a figure of speech extending from the fact that most households, even in a polygamous culture, will have only one man and one woman, and should not be taken literally. Every house with male children must have a firstborn and only one firstborn. If the first child born in a house is a female, she was the one to "open the matrix," but she is not called the firstborn. If there are two or three wives in a house, there will be a first child born of each wife, but only one firstborn in the house.

  2. "Firstborn" refers to the firstborn child of his mother. If a man has ten wives, each of whom bears sons, then ten sons must be redeemed. "Firstborn of man" in verse 13 should be understood to mean "firstborn humans."

Santa Claus, Reefer Madness, and Other Fairytales

Rabi Simeon b. Elazar said: Adam can be likened to an Israelite who married a proselyte woman, and he constantly sought to impress upon her mind the following regulations: "My daughter, eat not bread when thy hands are unclean, eat not of fruits which were not tithed, do not violate the Sabbath, do not get into the habit of making vows, and walk not with another man. If thou shouldst violate any of the commands, thou wilt die." Another one, who wished to mislead her, did those very things before her that she had been told were sinful: he ate bread when his hands were unclean, partook of fruits which were not tithed, violated the Sabbath, etc., and thereby caused this proselyte to think that everything that her husband told her was entirely false, so she violated all his commandments.

Babylonian Talmud, Trans. Rodkinson. pp 8-9

I am reminded of parents telling their children that Santa Claus brings presents, teachers telling their students that Marijuana brings madness, and politicians telling us all that single-payer health care brings health and happiness to all. After so many obvious lies, why in the world should anyone believe another word?

Patrilinealism and Naturalization

Exodus 6:14
These be the heads of their fathers' houses...
By God's design, all nations are counted according to their fathers. Contrary to modern Jewish practice, nationality is never determined by one's birth mother. Most people who call themselves Jewish today are descended from Jewish men, but many are almost certainly not. Fortunately for them, naturalization is also a biblical concept. The mixed multitude that left Egypt with the Hebrews were considered by God to be Israelites. Many others are unknowingly descended from long forgotten Israelite rhizomes, and God might someday call them out again to rejoin their Jewish brothers in the land of Israel.

In fact, I believe he is already doing just that.

Girls on the Left; Boys in the River

Exodus 1:16
...if it be a son
... When a woman marries, ideally she leaves her father's people and joins her husband's. Hebrew women were as accustomed to this institution as were their contemporaries. Pharaoh knew that their daughters would be much easier than their sons to assimilate into Egyptian society. If his goal was only population control, one might think Pharaoh would have been wiser to kill the girls, thereby reducing the number of Hebrews for two generations instead of only one.  However, there were three good reasons to target boys.

  1. If he had been successful, then the next generation of Israelites would have been Egyptians. He would have eliminated the Hebrews forever, while dramatically increasing the number of Egyptians in the next.
  2. Battles are fought by men. By God’s design, they are more likely to forcefully resist oppression.
  3. As a shadow of Yeshua, Moses’ arrival was almost certainly prophesied. Pharaoh, like Herod centuries later, thought to circumvent God’s design through force.

Update January 20, 2009: This could almost make one become a conspiracist: Declining Male Fertility Linked to Water Pollution.

Why Wasn't Rachel Buried with Jacob?

Genesis 49:31
…there I buried Leah.
Jacob's concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah, were not buried in this cave because they probably died sometime later in Egypt. The real question is why Rachel was not buried here. It was certainly not because Leah held a higher place in Jacob's affections. I do not believe that it had anything to do with whom Jacob married first or who was a real wife and who was not. I suspect that the separate burial of Rachel was prophetic of the separation of the two houses of Israel and Judah. The latter has remained physically identifiable with the patriarchs while the former has been scattered and has forgotten their origins. The blessing of Joseph in verse 26 reinforces this idea in my mind: "The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren."